On Illness
by Faintly Falling
Summary: Combination prose poem/soliloquy, mostly an experiment in stream-of-consciousness. Tom experiences the circular 'joys' of self-loathing, post-incident. Warning for dense-ass block of text. Tom's presence counts as a warning for pretty much anything else.


Sick inside.

I am sick inside.

I am sickness itself.

Other people are lucky. They 'get sick'.

I have sick, own it.

Had, has, have.

The spirit of sickness.

I'd picture that like a ghost, a specter. Something gray and filmy that floats around like fabric blowing in the wind. It seems elegant and eerie and still delicate, less threatening than the ghost of a person. They shouldn't be threatening, ghosts, not the way they show them in movies. Just a person, white and translucent. Not threatening at all. Not a monster with teeth or claws or fists...No, it's faces that make ghost haunting. Faces twisted in pain or fear or anger forever. Those are the faces that haunt dreams. The other people here... People...living ghosts. Wearing their problems with the world like they're carved into their bodies. What you think, what you are. One becomes the other, no separation. Who'd'a thunk? The nuthouse is more real than the real world. No bullshit here. Fantasy, self-delusion but no bullshit. Starkness and hospital clean. White, white, white, like endless paper that can't be overwritten. That's our punishment; we can't have a claim, can't even have our own words. Not allowed, not allowed. We all fade into the the white, washed out and sterile. Sterilized. Neutered. My life is blanks now, 'shootin' blanks', fucking vulgar as that expression is. I have nothing left to say or do and anyway, who would listen to a murderer? My words don't mean as much as the things you can ascribe to them but anyone could say that. It's especially true for me though because I did a *bad thing *. Close to the worst thing. People write philosophies based on it. When you can and can't do it, when and if. How, why, who...all goes back to Cain and Able. Even when there were only four people on the earth, they still fucking couldn't stand each other. They accuse me of sociopathy, think it's because I want what I can't have. Well, it's true. I didn't want his shitty job. Might be better than mine but it's still shitty. All jobs are shitty. I just wanted someone. I can't have that, I guess, can't be what other people are, do what other people do. Even if I get out of here, I'll be marked like Cain. The only way I'll get out of here is if I promise not to do what other people do. This is important right now, while I'm staring at my apple-juice-piss, smelling the nastiness of the other no-longer-people who have gone before me. I'm different from them, but I'm not people either. I scare the people("people") in charge with my different. They think I'm going to McMurphy everything like Jack Nicholson in that movie, foment all the lithium zombies into some kind of living-dead army. As if. I don't belong to these people. I don't belong anywhere. Sickness is supposed to have a cure; a pill, a tonic, a syrup, a lotion...Nobody's got a miracle tea for head-sick. Head sick is you-me. You become it in a way you never become cancer or tuberculosis. 'Cancer destroyed her body', 'cancer wrecked his immune system'.

Crazy ruined my life.

I can't even piss without someone waiting for me outside the door, make sure I don't stab anyone with my dick or something. Pierce them with my chewed jagged nails, maybe. My fists are always an option but I don't have the strength any more.

And who needs literal blood on his hands, anyway?

Something that's clean can still be filthy. Take this place, for example. Infected with all the sickness it holds, both the patients and the doctors. Should-be inmates, running the asylum. 'We're all mad here...' it's an idea that gets bandied around in the word. 'Acting nuts...', 'batshit', 'rat in a tin shithouse', nobody wants it near them, though. Nobody wants to touch it. Nobody wants it touching them. The cure is to stay with the other crazies, keep it confined like an epidemic, a contagion.

Don't catch the crazy.

Sick, sick, sick. Say a word too often and it loses its meaning. Like 'purple' or 'potato' or 'psycho'.

They want me to get out. Of the bathroom, not the shithouse. A bathroom might be a shitroom, I guess, but you can actually get rid of your shit. A shithouse implies that it accumulates. A house for keeping shit. Shit like me.

Some other slob needs to do his business, or maybe they just think I'm diddling myself. That's right, I get off on being confined and unstimulated. Getting treated like a retarded kindergartner just gets me so hard...bozos. I never liked touching the thing to begin with, now more than ever. To say nothing of how little interest I feel in anyone anymore, let alone attraction. Attraction is special, or at least it's supposed to be.

Sick, sick, sick. It's a word people call me without thinking about what it means. It's meant to imply disgust, revulsion. What I did is sick, wrong, so I am too. They don't realize that sick is an ascription. It's taking the responsibility away from me. Or implies that they should. People write songs about love as a 'sickness with no cure'...I take that a little far I guess. I don't do things by half.

Maybe I should try.

Sick's an all-purpose word really. It's a word people would call me if they knew I was standing here thinking, feeling my dick go soft in my hand and staring at a urinal. You can't be alone with yourself. People will tell you this. That's weird. That's bad, bad, bad. Makes you do Bad Things.

Makes you sick.


End file.
